CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[andyknebs]

You guys are going to infect me with the CRT disease aren't you.
I messed with it this morning for about 1 1/2 hours and can't wait to go home to tinker some more. I will get this thing dialed in.
I think the manual is in Chinese because (rastor, oscillator, componet and RGB) must be chinese cause I sure as hell don't know what they mean.
In the manual it gives directions for componet and RGB. I thought they were the same thing.

Okay, I do have a question.
All of my stuff goes through my Centerstage CS-HD so do I have to readjust for the Wii, LD, DVD player and the HD satellite seperately or just once for the Wii, LD, DVD because the output is 720p for the 3 of them.

Will the projector know when I'm shooting the HD signal to it at the 1080i? I will assume I will refocus that one seperately.
Will I have to change the Input A to show HD on the projector from RGB each time I switch from DVD to HD satellite? Or will it know automatically?


Tonight I will have a laptop (neighbor's) to look at the manual while I am making the adjustments.

I do the the screen centered and all crosshatchs are adjusted; now I have to work on the corners because they are off a bit. I reread the manual again today and think I should be able to do it.

Thanks,
Andy

[ecrabb]

You're catching on to our plan! Addicting, isn't it? Sometime, when you have an hour or two to burn, read this:
http://www.curtpalme.com/CRTPrimer.shtm

There's tons of excellent info in there all about CRT's. Some of it you won't need to worry about because you already have your machine and it's all mounted, but it will help give you a deeper understanding how these things work. For more on the whole component/RGB signal thing, see 'Hooking it all up --> Analog Devices. Here's a directl link:
http://www.curtpalme.com/CRTPrimer_18.shtm

If the Centerstage is set to scale and output everything 720p, then yes - your convergence and geometry settings will be the same for all those SD inputs and no adjustment will be necessary regardless of the source.

When you switch to pass-through, then the projector will see the different signal and use a different default memory block - that's why it was all mis-converged the first time your fired it up. When you make adjustments and save settings, you'll be saving those settings only for that memory block (unless you specifically would like to do otherwise).

Good luck and have fun!!! It really does get easier.

SC

[Phil Smith]

I don't have a scaler, so I don't know much about them, but it seems it would be best to output everything at 1080i from the scaler, no? That way you only have to dial in one memory block.

[andyknebs]

Thanks SC.
Phil, can I do that? I don't think I can do that because I thought the max was 720p for those source devices.

[andyknebs]

SC,
I am Example 1 in the link you sent me. So if I have a Wii, LD, DVD through the Scaler, don't I have to run that at 720p?

By the way, I already read curt's take on CRT's and that is why I want to keep it.
My neighbor has a 60" HD and has 1 wire to his stereo equipment and 1 wire going from his blu-ray to his TV and sees me struggling to get the HD working and wonders what the hell I'm doing.

Yes he is over for movies at my house all the time but I want to blow him away with an HD signal.

[ecrabb]

No, you should be able to run those devices at whatever resolution(s) the Centerstage allows. It all depends on the CS, really. For instance, you might want to run 1080i for DVD, 720p for Wii, and 1440x960p for LD. The variable is the Centerstage - I don't know anything about it, so I don't know what it allows.

Phil's idea of running everything at 1080i would greatly simplify matters, provided the Centerstage has full aspect ratio control (which I assume it does indeed). I don't really see any downside to scaling everything to 1080i, except for scan lines. On my G70, I can see 1080i scan lines pretty badly from my seating position. That may be why your installer originally chose 720p. The sources aren't really high enough resolution to warrant scaling any further than 720p, and you don't have to worry about 1080i scan lines. Of course, that's not an option for source material that's already 1080i, unless you have a newer HD scaler, and I MUCH prefer the additional resolution of 1080i (over 720p) with something like satellite, BD or HD DVD).

Hope that wasn't too confusing.

SC

[andyknebs]

Maybe I'll try it tonight at 1080i. I think if I remember the picture got worse when I tried it before.

As for running each one at a different output (which the CS will do) then I would need to have a different memory block for each one, right?

More to tinker with. I hope to watch a movie and some HD satellite sometime before summer

[garyfritz]

Unless your neighbor's "1 wire" is an HDMI cable, he's wasting his money on blu-ray &etc! If he's using S-video or (shudder) composite video, he's throwing away a lot of the signal before it gets to his screen.

Andy, I had a little practice setting up a G70, and I tried to distill the gazillions of operations into one sane procedure. See if the attached helps any. I can't answer any questions -- never worked on the G70 enough to really learn my way around it -- but this might help you get started.


G70 Setup Procedure
==============

1. Do full mechanical setup: level, centered on screen, perpendicular to screen, etc. (QUESTION: I want to keep the rasters centered. Is it OK to tilt G70’s to adjust the height of the projected image, or should I plan on raising the screen if necessary to center it where the projector throws the image?)
2. Do a full reset: hold down RESET button 5 secs, then choose FACTORY reset. This doesn’t seem to set everything to 128 or anything sensible like that, but it’s a start.

Phase I: One color at a time

3. No input. Select P2 internal oscillator. (SERVICE SETTING -> INT OSC)
4. Display crosshatch. Center all 3 rasters (using CENT), adjusting so the edges of the crosshatch are equidistant from the tube edges. Center the crosshatch pattern, not the raster itself.
5. Set raster size (using SIZE) to leave roughly 7mm between crosshatch and tube edge. (SIZE adjusts internal patterns. RGB SIZE adjusts external image size.)
6. Optical focus:
== a. Set center focus, then corner focus.
== b. Defocus center slightly, then adjust Scheimpflug for equal line thickness on both sides or top/bottom.
== c. Touch up center/corner focus to get it perfect.
7. Magnetic setup:
== a. Normalize H SKEW to 128
== b. Rotate deflection coils to level the raster (use the crosshair internal pattern and get the horizontal center line perfectly level with H SKEW at 128)
== c. Normalize all electronic focus, 2p/4p, AQP/DQP, etc to 128
== d. Adjust the 4-pole tabs (CPC magnets) on the tube necks: display dots, set MG-ALL focus to 0, adjust tabs for round blobs in the center of the screen. Set focus to 255, adjust center 2p to center the flare. Go back & forth to get it right. Touch up 4p on screen? Or is that unnecessary if you’ve set the CPC tabs?
== e. Adjust the zone astigmatism (zone AQP/DQP) in all zones. Don’t use dots: use the EM pattern, adjust each zone for sharpest EM. You may want to tweak the center optical focus to optimize the optical focus at the zone you’re currently working on so you can see the effects of your adjustments very clearly – but in theory your optical focus is good by now.
== f. Magnetic focus: use EM pattern. Again, may want to tweak optical focus while you’re adjusting.

Phase II: Combine and converge the colors

8. Set to P2 int osc.
9. Display crosshatch. Check G centering on screen. If mech setup is correct and raster is properly is centered, G crosshatch should be centered on screen. If not, adjust G CENT to center on screen. (May want to adjust screen height to move screen center to G center?)
10. Set toe-in so L & R sides of R & B crosshatches line up with G crosshatch, with R & B H CENT at 128. Use R & B V CENT to line up R & B vertically if necessary. (Using full-screen crosshatch is supposed to be better than lining up the centers of crosshairs. But if R/B linearity is wrong, when you adjust LIN the center stays still and the L/R edges move. So shouldn’t you set toe-in based on center?)
11. Use G SIZE to adjust crosshatch to desired screen size. (This assumes you have the projector at the proper throw distance.) Do full G registration.
12. Set R/B SIZE to match G. Do full R/B convergence. Get it as good as you can without ZONE.
13. Fine-tune with ZONE.
14. Calibrate 6500K grayscale (BIAS/GAIN) with colorimeter.
15. At this point you have a pretty complete setup. Hold down MEMORY 5 seconds to save your setup to all memory blocks.

Phase III: External signals

16. Now you can start connecting your desired external signal. Start with your most-used signal, hopefully the highest-freq signal.
17. Align external signal with internal patterns:
== a. Display external signal.
== b. Hit SHIFT, then PATTERN.
== c. Use SHIFT to center external image on internal crosshatch.
== d. Use RGB SIZE to adjust external image to same size as internal pattern.
== e. Return to P2 internal oscillator.
18. Magnetic 2P/4P and AQP/DQP are frequency-specific. Tweak them for your new signal.
19. Tweak convergence for new signal.
20. Adjust SHIFT if necessary. (Incorrect V SHIFT can produce a line & some distortion near the top of the raster.)
21. Set blanking.

===========================

That's all! You don't have to do ALL of these for a first setup, but this is the full-blown process for a complete setup.

In particular you can skip steps 7b and 7d if you don't want to open up the case and fool with the magnetic adjustments inside. Best to avoid that at first anyway, until you understand where the lethal voltages are...

Gary

[andyknebs]

Gary,
I guess I'll be busy tonight.
Do I look directly into the lens to determine the edges for internal using the SIZE?
If so, because I have some even wear from having the set orginally at 4:3 should I set the size internally at the 4:3 size and have the RGB size set to the full screen? (16:9) Can I even do that?

[Phil Smith]

[garyfritz]

For best raster centering, I prefer to pull the lenses. It's easy to do. But you can look through the lenses and do a pretty good job. Just try not to get any nose smudges on the lenses.

Centering a 4:3 raster is easier than a 16:9 because you can get the top/bottom centering too. Then you can squeeze it down to 16:9.